HCI International 2011 Conference
PRIVACY POLICY

Last Updated 4th November 2010

This Privacy Policy (hereinafter referred to as "Policy") of the HCI International 2011 Conference (hereinafter referred to as “Conference”) explains the practices regarding the collection of personal information when you visit this web site. This Policy also explains practices regarding personal information obtained from sources other than the Conference web site, such as written, verbal and email communications.

Please read this Policy carefully before submitting any personal information to the Conference. Also, please note that this Policy does not apply to our processing of personal information on behalf of, and subject to the instructions of, third parties such as the Conference convention center, appointed hotels, Conference Proceedings publisher and other service providers, affiliated companies, marketing partners, or other authors and conference participants. Click on one of the links below to visit a specific section:

Collection of Personal Information

At every author or conference participant interaction, the Conference may collect personal information. In addition to any other information you may choose to provide to us, collected personal information may include your name and contact information, preferred communication methods, business name, title and business address, date of arrival and departure, and details about hotel and airline itineraries you book. We may also record details on joint travelers, including their names and ages.

In addition, we collect other personal information when you interact with the Conference in various ways, such as:

When you register for an Account at the Conference Management System (hereinafter referred to as "CMS"), we also ask you to select a username, by providing an email address and password.

If you choose to submit a proposal for a meeting or an event (e.g., tutorial presentation), we record meeting and event specifications, the date of the event, and, for corporate events, information on your organization (name, billing details).

If you choose to participate to the Conference Exhibition, we record booth specifications and, for corporate participations, information on your organization (name, billing details).

If you are invited to organize an event in the context of the Conference (e.g., invited paper session), this web site offers a feature that allows you to send an electronic invitation to other participants. If you choose to do so, we will ask you for the recipient's name and email address. By using this feature, you should be aware that the data you enter for these invitations are personal information which will be treated according to this Policy.

How the Conference Uses Your Collected Personal Information

We use your personal information to provide Conference services such as: paper, poster and tutorial proposals submission, proposals’ review and notification of the outcome, collection of the camera ready versions and publication of the accepted proposals, registration for the Conference, participation in a tutorial, participation in the exhibition of the Conference, publication of the Conference program, and other transactions. We also use the personal information to provide you with information about meeting and event planning and access to specific account information for administrative purposes. In addition, we may use the information to improve the Conference's services, as well as the performance and usability of this web site. We also use details to send you newsletters, promotions and featured specials, and to conduct online surveys, and other promotional operations for this event and future events via email, or postal mail.

How the Conference Shares Personal Information

The Conference in order to provide all the required services may share your personal information with other service providers that may be located in countries outside of your own. Although the data protection laws of these various countries may not be as comprehensive as those in your own country, the Conference will take appropriate steps to ensure that your personal information is handled as described in this Policy.

Convention Center and associated hotels: We may share personal information with the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek Hotel and Convention Center, which may jointly use the personal information for the purposes described above. Hilton Hotels Corporation is the party responsible for the management of the jointly used personal information.

Special Events or Meetings: If during the Conference you participate in a special event or meeting, information collected for meeting and event planning may be shared with the organizers of those meetings and events, and, where appropriate, conference participants who organize or participate in the meeting or event.

Onsite Services: We may share personal information with providers of onsite services within the convention center, such as spa treatments, excursions, entertainment, golf, or restaurants.

Service Providers: We rely on service providers to provide certain products and services, such as credit card billing, registration services, and administering some of the operations of the Conference, providing services in connection with the Conference web site, including communicating news and delivering promotional and transactional materials via email and direct mail, and processing credit card transactions. The Conference will disclose personal information to service providers as appropriate. If you register for the Conference, billing information will be shared with the credit card provider and if you use a corporate credit card, possibly, your employer.

Conference Proceedings: All papers and posters submitted and accepted for presentation during the Conference, will be also published by Springer. All required information necessary for the publication of the papers and posters will be shared with the publisher.

Conference Program: About six months before the Conference an advanced program will be published on the web site, freely available, and may also appear as a printed version, which will contain all papers selected for presentation during the Conference, together with author and co-author names, followed by organization name and country. About one month before the Conference the final program will be published both on the web site, freely available, and in a printed version including papers, posters and tutorials together with satellite events, also containing author and co-author names, tutorial presenters names, and exhibitors names, all followed by organization names and countries.

Business Transactions: If changes occur during the organization of the Conference (e.g., change of a credit card processor), the Conference may, in its sole and absolute discretion, transfer the information collected, including, without limitation, non-personal information and personal information, to one or more affiliated or unaffiliated third parties.

Other: In addition, the Conference may disclose personal information, with or without prior notice to you, in order to: (i) comply with applicable laws; (ii) respond to governmental inquiries or requests from public authorities; (iii) comply with valid legal processes; (iv) protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of the Conference, web site visitors, authors, conference participants, employees or the public; (v) pursue available remedies or limit the damages that the Conference may sustain; (vi) enforce our Site Usage Agreement; and (vii) respond to an emergency.

Personal Information from Children

We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under 18 years of age. As a parent or legal guardian, please do not to allow your children to submit personal information without your permission.

Sensitive Information

The term "sensitive information" refers to information related to your racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religion or other beliefs, health, criminal background or trade union membership. We do not generally collect sensitive information unless it is volunteered by you. We may use health data provided by you exclusively to serve you better and meet your particular needs.

Collection of Non-Personal Information

When you visit and interact with this web site, the Conference and third parties with whom the Conference has contracted to provide services to the Conference, may collect non-personal information (for example, a catalog of the web site pages you visit).

As with many other sites, our web site uses "cookies" or other technologies to help us deliver content specific to your interests, to process your requests, and/or to analyze your visiting patterns. Cookies, by themselves, cannot be used to disclose your individual identity. This information identifies your browser, but not you, to our servers when you visit our web site. If you want to remove cookies at any time from your computer, you can delete them using your browser (consult your browser's "help" menu to learn how to delete cookies).

Because non-personal information does not personally identify you, we may use or disclose such information for any purpose. In some instances, we may combine non-personal information with personal information (such as embedding e-mail addresses in cookies). If we do combine any non-personal information with personal information, the combined information will be treated by us as personal information in accordance with this Policy.

Links to Third-Party Websites

Our web site may contain links to third parties' websites. Please note that we are not responsible for the collection, use, maintenance, sharing, or disclosure of data and information by such third parties. If you provide information on third party web sites, the privacy policy and terms of service on those sites are applicable. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of web sites that you visit before submitting personal information.

How to Change Your Personal Information

If you have registered for a CMS Account, the information you provided to us at the time of registration may be accessed, reviewed and updated at any time by signing in using your Username and Password and clicking on "User Profile". Please also note that a CMS account can also be created following an invitation for a special event or paper session.

To the extent required by applicable law, you may be able to request that we inform you about the personal information we maintain about you and, where appropriate, request that we update, correct, and/or suppress personal information about you that we maintain in our active database. We will make all required updates and changes within the time specified by the applicable law. Such requests must be submitted by email to privacy@hcii2011.org or in writing to the following postal address: World Conference Services Inc, Attn: Costumer Privacy Department, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103, USA. To protect your confidentiality, we can only respond to such requests to the email address that you have registered or otherwise provided to us. Please remember that if you make such a request, we may not be able to provide you with the same quality and variety of services to which you are accustomed.

In addition, in some circumstances based on applicable law, you may request that we cease sharing personal information about you with our business partners or that the Conference ceases the use of personal information about you by email to privacy@hcii2011.org or in writing to the following postal address: World Conference Services Inc, Attn: Costumer Privacy Department, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103, USA. We will seek to honor those requests consistently with applicable law.

We also seek to require our affiliates and service providers to exercise reasonable efforts to maintain the confidentiality of personal information about you. For online transactions, we use technology to protect the personal information that you transmit to us via our web site. Unfortunately, however, no security system or system of transmitting data over the Internet can be guaranteed to be entirely secure.

For your own privacy protection, we encourage you not to include sensitive personal information in any emails you may send to us. Please do not send credit card numbers or any sensitive personal information to us via email.

Opt Out Option

If you have given us your contact information (mail address, fax number, email address or phone number), we may want to inform you about our services or invite you to events by email, telephone or post.

If you prefer not to receive marketing materials from us, you may change your preferences at any time by: (i) sending us an email to privacy@hcii2011.org (ii) in writing (including also your email address) to the postal address World Conference Services Inc, Attn: Costumer Privacy Department, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103, USA; (iii) using the unsubscribe procedure in the email you receive from us. We will update your preferences as soon as reasonably practical.

Please note, however, that if you "opt out" as described above, we will not be able to remove your personal information from the databases of affiliates or business partners with which we have already shared your personal information (i.e., to which we have already provided your personal information as of the date of your opt-out request).

Special Notification for California Residents

Conference participants who reside in California and have provided their personal information to the HCI International 2011 Conference may request information about our disclosures of certain categories of personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. Such requests must be submitted to us by email to privacy@hcii2011.org or in writing to the following postal address: World Conference Services Inc, Attn: Costumer Privacy Department, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103. Within thirty days of receiving such a request, we will provide you a list of the categories of personal information disclosed to third parties for third-party direct marketing purposes during the immediately preceding calendar year, along with the names and addresses of these third parties. This request may be made no more than once per calendar year. We reserve our right not to respond to requests submitted other than to the address specified in this paragraph.

Policy Modifications

We may modify this Policy from time to time. When we make material changes to this policy we will post the revised policy on the homepage of our web site. You can tell when this Policy was last updated by looking at the date at the top of the Policy. Any changes to our Policy will become effective upon posting of the revised Policy on the web site. Use of the web site following such changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised Policy then in effect.

Additional Information

If you have any questions or you need additional information about this Policy or how the HCI International 2011 Conference processes your personal information, please contact us by email to privacy@hcii2011.org or by postal mail to World Conference Services Inc, Attn: Costumer Privacy Department, 37-14 Astoria Blvd, Astoria, NY 11103, USA.